Your outrage at people who bomb PPs is completely justified, but you're making a false comparison here. Lila Rose is not firebombing PP clinics or smashing windows. She is exposing blatant violations of the law that endanger innocent children and protect child sexual abusers. Why are you so eager to stop people like Rose? This isn't some kind of game — these staffers have been found in multiple cases operating on the side of the abusers, and that has to be exposed before it can be realized and stopped.

At you other people who are so quick to laud PP: go look up PPs founder, Margaret Sanger — one of the first major proponents of eugenics in America and an out-and-out racist. And this isn't just the viewpoint of the PPs founder. If you want a glimpse of PP today, just watch this: http://liveaction.org/projects/racism/ If it doesn't shock you completely, it should.

By using a sting operation, no one's privacy was invaded but we see how certain staff members behave when no one is looking. So far no one has explained to me how you think the same outcome could be obtained without violating patient privacy.

If what she alleges is true, that every time she has done this she's gotten these kinds of responses, that is something you should be concerned about rather than defending simply because you don't trust the messenger.

The disclosure of the Bush administration's clandestine, illegal, and unethical policies are completely different in kind from Lila Rose's “dislosure” of violations in PP clinics — meaning, the nature of the disclosures themselves, not just the violations being disclosed. When you're talking about things like the NSA secret spy program, the lies and misinformation used to justify the war in Iraq (i.e., WMDs, connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, etc.), the use of arbitrary indefinite detention w/o charges or trial, the denial of habeus corpus, the massive expansion of executive power, etc., etc., etc., these abuses, crimes, and bad acts came to public notice via many different routes and sources. It wasn't one individual person with an ideological opposition to one medical procedure (i.e., abortion) going into one kind of medical facility (local community clinics designed for girls and women who cannot afford private physicians' services) with a hidden camera to entrap workers into breaking, or appearing to break, the law so that the clinics in which these workers are employed would have to shut down and no longer be able to provide ob-gyn care to women with no other resources.

It's this statement that is bizarre. There is no reason to look for violations because there's no evidence of violations. Uh, OK. So in your world, how do we know if there's evidence, if we agree ahead of time that we shouldn't be looking for it?

Well, gee, I don't know. How do we know if there's evidence that coal mines or factories or giant discount retailers are ignoring safety regulations or exploiting their employees? Are there inspectors and government auditors whose job it is to ensure compliance with codes, regulations, and local laws?

How do we know if real estate developers are building homes and subdivisions and apartment buildings to code? How does a potential home-buyer avoid buying a home infested with carpenter ants or termites? Do we have no alternative but to allow zealous college students to go in with hidden cameras and try to trap developers and sellers to reveal that they are lying? Do we assume they are lying and breaking the law and, armed with that assumption, go in and do everything we can to try to prove that they are?

I've never understood the ease with which prochoicers accept Planned Parenthood's ethical standing without question.

Well, gee, could it be because I worked there? Could it be because I saw the staff work day to day while I ran the computers and helped the CFO work on the budget? A budget whose main goal was to provide services to people who couldn't otherwise afford contraceptives, pap smears and other forms of care was something that we spent a lot of time on. Maybe it was the bomb threats that turned me against the religious conservatives. Or the time they sabotaged the building's AC system. Could it be the clinic that didn't ever do a single abortion that was fire-bombed? Could the protesting “minister” who stood outside and just “cried” over the woman he'd seen come in with a large belly from her unborn baby (His words, not mine.) going into Planned Parenthood for an abortion when the truth was that PP in Kansas City didn't do abortions after 12 weeks gestation that made me doubt his honesty and that of his followers. Maybe it was cleaning up the glass from the windows that were shot out over the weekend that made me think that the conservative “pro-lifers” just aren't that rational or considerate of the truth or any people who don't follow their beliefs. All of that happened in only two years of working there. Sorry, CS, but I know who the honest people were and they weren't the people on your side of the debate.

Lila Rose is not looking for evidence of violations. She is looking for ways to shut down clinics that provide abortions because she wants abortions to be illegal but there is no chance that will happen because most Americans want abortion to stay legal. It's not the alleged violations she cares about; it's discrediting the clinics and clinic staff themselves, causing them legal hassles, convincing consumers not to use them. But again, not because of violations, because if it could be proved that family planning clinics are 100 percent violation-free, Lila Rose would still want them shut down.

The whole idea of “looking for violations” in the absence of any evidence that there ARE violations (i.e., systemic and widespread violations, because NO area of human life is entirely free of lawbreakers or unethical players).

We did know about it. We've known about it since at least the start of Bush's second term. Or should I say, a lot of us knew it. Others ignored all the evidence and facts about Bush violations of the law and unethical behavior, accused anyone who refused to be a know-nothing of being anti-American and having Bush Derangement Syndrome, and absolutely, vehemently, doggedly, refused to believe what was right in front of their eyes.

I don't want to get personal and name names. I'll just roll my eyes in the appropriate direction.

I would not.

Um…yeah. Nobody else besides this one person is looking for PP to do anything wrong. My turn to roll my eyes.

Here's a possibility: a lot of us prochoicers have had to use their services at some time or another, and didn't have anywhere else to go. To most people, including scared teenagers, being treated like a human being who needs full information goes a long way.

Does she think that all women and young girls have abortions just for the heck of it? Honestly there are two sides to every story and I don't hear the women's reason for having an abortion to loud and clear.

Again with the feelings. {rolls eyes}

You know, my feeling was that if the Bush administration had been violating the law or doing anything unethical in any significant way, then we would have known about it. How'd that feeling turn out?

Um, because other than Lila Rose, no one is looking for evidence of violations? How else could this possibly come to light? A guy who molested his stepdaughter is going to come forward and confess and complain that the abortion providers didn't report the crime?